Strike Hits Psychological Turning Point
Optimists once hoped for resolution by Labor Day; now, picketers are headed into pumpkin-spice season
Welp: picket-line staple Dean’s Coffee has started selling iced pumpkin spice lattes and pumpkin spice cold brew. That may tell us all we need to know about where folks are, psychologically, at this juncture of the writers and actors work stoppages. (Chronologically, we’re on Day 123 and Day 48.)
What now feels like a while ago, there was some hopeful chatter that the writers strike might be resolved by Labor Day, the symbolism of which would not be lost on anyone.
“I don’t think at that point any of us thought we’d still be in this situation in September,” one frustrated IATSE member wrote in to tell me.
Now, rolling into the long weekend, the Writers Guild and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers appear to believe the ball is in the other’s court to respond to counterproposals. If there have been any sidebars or backchannel conversations, they haven’t yet risen to public awareness.
“I find it a little bit encouraging but I wish that they were further along with those discussions,” dancer and background actor Meaghan Beese told me from the 30 Rock picket line on Wednesday.
Arrowverse showrunner Marc Guggenheim is “uncharacteristically optimistic” about the trajectory of the talks. He thinks there are areas that definitely still need some work, such as the studios’ stance on merit-based residuals, “but this is what negotiations are for.”
The AMPTP’s Aug. 11 proposal packages was a “good foundation,” he told me Thursday from the picket line outside of Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery’s office in the Flatiron District. He agrees with the WGA that the counteroffers are “not nearly enough, but it at least agreed to have a discussion of all of our major issues, and I think once we’re in that territory, I actually start to feel optimistic.”
The stakes are high as the last few months of the year approach. Whether the town is looking at a re-ignition of the development and production cycle — or a continued bottleneck that will crash into the slates and soundstage and post-production schedules of 2024 — is dependent on when the strikes end. Late September or mid-October is the new goal date in many a mind, with sights set on production restarting in January.
I’ve heard from plenty of Hollywood’s rank-and-file this week — including producers, PAs, assistants, studio staffers, development and production execs — who are anxious.
“If we end this by September or even October, there’s the chance I can get health insurance for my family and actually have a show moving forward for 2024, and the possibility of selling something new,” one TV writer, who preferred to stay anonymous, told me. “If not… it’s hard to say.”
Another Strikegeist reader, an actor who appeared in one of the year’s biggest blockbusters, said that “for months, my representatives were working hard to leverage that into more opportunities, but overnight, it went from ‘You’ll be having meetings with all the major networks and studios’ to ‘You’ll be lucky if you’re working by January 2024.’”
Once we round the corner of this long weekend, some industry insiders believe the major entertainment companies will start looking hard at where they can trim the fat, possibly furloughing or even laying off executives in the coming weeks. That’s on top of thousands who have already been laid off over the last year or two as a result of M&A and consolidation.
“I am firmly in the camp that this will be a lost year for most, with negative knock-on effects carrying on at least into the middle of next year,” a laid-off studio executive emailed me. “Even if the strike ends today, it will not fix the damage done to the studio's product pipelines. Q4 will be ugly for most of them with declines in ad revenue and theatrical as well as higher churn. That is in addition to the structural problem of declining linear TV money. When those Q4 numbers are reported early next year, it will create an additional wave of chaos as Wall St. will punish their stocks and up the pressure on leadership to unload assets and people or seek out last ditch M&A.”
As for job prospects? “For me personally, if I had a nickel for the number of times someone has told me ‘I'm hiring you in 2024...,’” this person added, “I would certainly have enough spare change to pelt a CEO's car and make a dent.”
As always, if you’re hearing something you think I should know about, talk to me: elaine@theankler.com.
Here’s our full video chat with Guggenheim, if you’d like to watch the whole thing:
Maybe the writers are covertly working on those scripts during the strike, so life will be easier for them when they officially go back to work. There's so many reasons why broadcast is dying. Viewership is so low, and I'm guessing that the remaining audience is not particularly attractive to advertisers, so...death spiral.